Ding: When will the Lakers be any fun again?

Lakers forward Pau Gasol suffered a bloody nose and cut across the bridge of it with 1:05 left in the loss to Denver on Sunday night. He is expected to be able to play Tuesday in Houston. MARK J. TERRILL, AP

LOS ANGELES – Kobe Bryant played more than 40 minutes for the 13th time in his past 14 games. Bryant going nonstop the entire second half has somehow become standard protocol. And upon seeing Danilo Gallinari's 3-pointer drop to boost Denver's lead back up to six points with 13.8 seconds left, Bryant very uncharacteristically let his shoulders dramatically slump and his head hang low.

Steve Nash looked around the Lakers' locker room when the loss had sunk in Sunday night and summed it up with three words: "Guys are down." The guy whose injury return and ability to make others better was supposed to save the season saw the depression – and not the first depression – the players would have to overcome, saying later to reporters: "We can't feel sorry for ourselves. ... We can't give up on ourselves."

Mike D'Antoni left his postgame news conference Sunday night and needed a big, deep breath just to get going back to his office ... and when you take into account training camp, D'Antoni has coached only half the season.

Everything comes so, so hard for the Lakers. It's not easy; it's not fun. It's just too hard.

It's not how teams win championships.

The season is too long to be so heavy. There have to be streaks where things just work and you ride the wave and you just feel good.

You have to minimize the valleys because it just takes too much energy to climb out of them – and this season has felt like one big valley, going from cramming Mike Brown's offense to figuring out whether Nash's or Dwight Howard's left leg has more nerve damage to dreaming up ways to cheat back in transition defense when everyone is flat-out faster than you.

Even that recent winning streak of five games ended in demoralizing fashion with how feeble an effort Howard put forth the very next night in Denver in the failure to make it six. The only time the Lakers breathed the fresh air of being above .500 was at 6-5 – after D'Antoni's first game on Nov. 20 vs. Brooklyn – and that very next night in Sacramento was instantly demoralizing, too, with a single-single dud from Howard in a 16-point loss.

Howard, 27, was supposed to be the younger star to rejuvenate the Lakers, but it has been an ongoing struggle for him to find energy in the season after his back surgery. He finally just went for it Sunday night with his best all-around effort of the season, yet he still failed to make the winning plays – clanging two free throws as Denver's lead climbed back to 10 points midway through the fourth and then throwing that simply stupid outlet pass with two minutes to go.

He aggravated his shoulder injury down the stretch just before Pau Gasol on those weak knees and sore foot got blasted right in the nose, and all the pain was an apt representation of how this Lakers season has felt.

It's too hard.

The next logical change would be to trade Gasol, because it makes a lot of sense that the Lakers want to shed his $19 million salary and aren't using him to his best effect in D'Antoni's system anyway. Problem is, even more change would mean even more adjustment and even more energy drained just trying to figure stuff out.

The only way for the Lakers to have any chance of redeeming this season is for it to get a lot easier real soon.

D'Antoni's plan is for it to get easier on offense – Nash creating more easy chances, Howard maybe starting to bolt hard for the hoop so they can actually run the Nash-Howard pick-and-roll set that D'Antoni was hired to coach – and then everyone bringing back energy for defense because they're so happy about scoring.

"We're not real smooth on offense and sometimes that deflates us on the defensive end," D'Antoni said. "We have to get over that."

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